The Mizells: A family's reunion and a chance at re-commitment

My family — the Mizells — has one of the most pre-eminent names in South Florida history. For more than 100 years, we have built a well-earned and richly deserved legacy of service that has benefited Broward County and its African-American community.

Our family legacy centers around the unique role our family members have played in meeting the needs of individuals, long before local government assumed those responsibilities as part of its official civic obligation. At almost every important juncture of Broward County history, the Mizells played a role when blacks were not permitted to obtain necessary services from the larger white community because of legal segregation and the prevailing racial attitudes of the time. It was often said that, in the family's heyday, a Mizell, brought you into this world, provided you with good schooling, built your house, helped your fight for your rights, took pictures of you and your family throughout your life, healed you when you got sick, and buried you when you died.

In other words, from cradle to grave, the Mizells were there.

Our family played a major role in ending legal segregation in Broward County, but that victory came at a high price. Once integration opened the doors to a better life, many African Americans went through them, depriving once segregated but vibrant communities of black talent and resources. We were no different. When opportunities outside of South Florida presented themselves to members of my generation, we left, too.

The black community of Broward County today is a far different place from the one that raised us. Gone are the neighborhoods that nurtured physicans, hustlers, schoolteachers and players. The businesses that once thrived are gone, too, replaced by boarded up buildings, trash-strewn lots and broken dreams. The battles have changed as well. Education, economic development and the need to compete in a global economy are the ongoing struggles of a new generation. Money is important, although not as much as the spiritual and intellectual commitment needed to change devastated communities.

Every other year, Mizells from across the country come together to celebrate in a family reunion. This year the gathering starts later this week in Fort Lauderdale, and the Mizells of Broward County are the "host family." The tradition began over 40 years ago by another branch of the family, and this year under the capable direction of my cousins, Cheryl and Linda Mizell, the entire family will participate in a three-day session that includes the presentation of a biennial almanac of family profiles and articles, an awards program with honors named for family pioneers, a storytelling night, financial and health workshops, a youth mentoring program, and a special ceremony to honor Broward County's proclamation that July 31 is officially "Mizell Family Legacy Appreciation Day" and "Don Mizell Appreciation Day."

The idea is to use the reunion as a successful networking organization by developing closer family bonds, locally and nationally. I would like to see a new generation of Mizells continue our family's legacy in South Florida, and I am encouraging my family to use our collective resources to help restore the communities that were so important to earlier generations of Mizells. We're uniquely equipped to do it.

The legacy of the Mizells of Broward was forged starting 100 years ago by the patriarch of the family, my grandfather, Isadore Mizell, Sr., and carried forth primarily by four of his eldest children, Von D. Mizell, Rev. Ivory Mizell, Roy Mizell and Ethel Mizell Pappy over the course of the 20th Century. Individually, their hallmarks of accountability, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, independence and self-respect proved to be enduring traits that are shared by many members of our family to the present day. In the aftermath of the segregation it inspired us to aspire and attain unprecedented heights in the world writ large in law, medicine, academia, business, government, public service, media, and the creative arts.

Isadore Mizell, Sr., built the first school for "colored" children in the area around 1912, three years before Broward County was established in 1915. A farmer and carpenter with vast land holdings in the Dania Beach area, he built housing in that community and helped feed many African Americans there during the Great Depression.

His eldest son, my uncle, Dr.Von D. Mizell, became one of only a handful of black doctors, and the first surgeon, in South Florida. In 1938, he joined another legendaryblack physician, Dr. James Sistrunk, to build Provident Hospital, the county's black hospital that would endure for almost 40 years. Besides a distinguished medical career, Dr. Mizell founded the Broward County chapter of the NAACP and became a nationally recognized leader for masterminding the Beach Wade-Ins to desegregate Fort Lauderdale's beaches.